Arteezy loses bet, gets immortalized as a creep

Artour “Arteezy” Babaev is one of Dota 2’s most endearing stars. The young solo player’s immense talent has taken Evil Geniuses further than any team in the Western scene over the past year, and his eccentric personality makes him one of the most popular in the game.

And now, he will forever be immortalized in some of the game’s most popular custom game modes. Just not in the way he expected.

The Dota franchise itself started as a simple custom map for WarCraft 3. Many of its fans and biggest stars played a sampling of custom games, like Footmen Frenzy or the myriad of popular tower defense games, before becoming addicted to Dota. Now, with the Steam Workshop tools available for Dota 2, many of those nostalgic encounters are being revived on the new engine.

Babaev’s favorite was Enfo’s Team Survival, a hero defense game where two teams of players assuming Dota-style champions defend a base against waves of enemies, while buying spells to hinder the opposing team’s defense. It’s a different take on the tower defense genre. Instead of building towers to stop incoming foes, you use a team of heroes.

One of the developers porting Enfo’s to Dota 2, “Jicyphex,” made a bet with Babaev before The International 4: win, and he would add an Arteezy’s avatar into the game as a champion complete with abilities of Babaev’s choice. Lose? Well, that’s how you get a picture like this:

That’s the first attempt—one the author calls “quite Russian”—but you get the idea. It does closely follow Babaev’s outline for his punishment.

Babaev will be in the new version of Enfo’s—and a number of other custom games now, once word got out about the idea. But he won’t be a hero. He’ll be a creep, leading the wave of minions rushing into the player’s base.

The original concept does closely follow Babaev’s vision for his punishment and the pictures he modelled for it. “Shirtless boys thatrs me,” types Babaev, complete with his all-too-Arteezy typos. “Little shirtless underage boys it hink is good.”

The newer model version mocks one of Babaev’s most infamous moments, perhaps his biggest blunder. He’s wearing the Hand of Midas, the item he bought 20 minutes into the final match of Evil Geniuses’ battle against Vici Gaming in the TI4 semifinals. The golden glove provides a boost in experience and gold, but only becomes cost effective after many uses—meaning buying it in the mid to late game is often a suboptimal move. Evil Geniuses lost the match and were eliminated from The International.

Now, Babaev will be immortalized as a punching bag—and in some ways, a punch line—in the game modes he loves. There are certainly worse bets to lose.